Posted
by
Zonk
on Tuesday April 11, 2006 @07:21AM
from the wozinator dept.

theodp writes "In a Q&A session, Steve Wozniak discusses his forthcoming autobiography, how HP not only passed on his Apple design but also nixed his pleas to work on an HP computer, and the perks of being an Apple co-founder - free 65W AC adapters!"

Actually Woz was the more important Steve, the one people liked, the engineer rather than the salesman, the one who was not under the delusion that he could run a corporation, the one who decided not to make employees suffer under decades of on-the-job training while he developed the skills, the one who decided to do something more important, the one who was always welcome at Apple, the one person "at" Apple who doesn't need to care what Jobs thinks...

Woz, was and is a brilliant engineer. But there are hundreds like him. But there aren't many like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs IS Apple. Look what they did without him. 12 years of absolutely nothing. Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh. Then he started NeXT which was a decade ahead of its time. Then he brought Apple back from near extinction. Can you think of another corporation that can yield such influence over an industry while having less than 10% market share? Oh, and somewhere in his spare time, he bought a little animation studio and turned it into a force.

Woz, was and is a brilliant engineer. But there are hundreds like him. But there aren't many like Steve Jobs.

I'm sorry but you have that backwards. Exceptional engineers are far less common than exceptional saleman.

Steve Jobs IS Apple. Look what they did without him. 12 years of absolutely nothing. Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh.

Jobs is the PR face of Apple and the Mac. The brilliant innovation started at Xerox and continued with the very talented engineers at Apple. Jobs is merely a good saleman who recognized a good thing when he saw it at Xerox. Like Woz, the Xerox and Apple engineers who deserve the real credit are overshadows by the PR face.

Then he started NeXT which was a decade ahead of its time.

Actually in business school they study NeXT as an example of how to royally f' up.

Then he brought Apple back from near extinction. Can you think of another corporation that can yield such influence over an industry while having less than 10% market share?

Actually what saved Apple were the big developers say "NO" to Jobs and forcing Jobs to put backwards compatibility into Mac OS X. Jobs return and the surrounding PR machine was like the Microsoft cash investment, it was reassuring, it bought the Apple engineers some more time.

Oh, and somewhere in his spare time, he bought a little animation studio and turned it into a force.

Again salesmanship, again a PR face overshadowing the real talent,... Also note in this is an industry where salesmanship has a pretty heavy influence.

Jobs is like World War II's General MacArthur. "I" rather than "We", camera crew filming his wading ashore and dominating the newsreels,... Of course Jobs differs from MacArthur in that Jobs is not a genius.

I don't get your point. You deride Jobs for being only a "salesman," however his success proves that he is a salesman of rather exceptional caliber. If he was just average, then there would not be any way for him to have succeeded as well (and as regularly) as he has been able. Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple again -- that's a pretty remarkable track record. Salesman, engineer, guru, call him whatever you want, his results speak for themselves.As for the comparisons to MacArthur; well, there are a lot worse peopl

I don't get your point. You deride Jobs for being only a "salesman," however his success proves that he is a salesman of rather exceptional caliber. If he was just average, then there would not be any way for him to have succeeded as well (and as regularly) as he has been able. Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple again -- that's a pretty remarkable track record. Salesman, engineer, guru, call him whatever you want, his results speak for themselves.
As for the comparisons to MacArthur; well, there are a lot worse peo

Really? They study how to "f' up" by starting a company that produces brilliant, ground-breaking technology that runs on mulitple platforms and has some of the best developer tools ever seen, then selling the company for half a billion dollars? Please tell me how I can "f' up" like that.

Simple, ignore your customers, ignore your third party developers, produce things that your target market can't afford, and then get really really lucky and be able to salvage your assets through the sale of the firm. Pr

Believe me, neither was MacArthur.
He did a *brilliant* job rebuilding Japan after the war, but as a general?
I constantly go back & forth between him and Monty as to who was the most incompotent, egomaniacal, self-sentered and overrated generals of WW II.

MacArthur succeeded far more often than he failed. Chinese involvement in Korea was a relatively rare failing. MacArthur was able to go on the offensive when he was only tasked with more of a defensive strategy while Europe was dealt with, he was

My Dad knew General MacArthur personally, and suffered the consequences of that knowledge: He was shot at the battle of Agno Crossing, shot again and captured the day after Cristmas, survived the Bataan Death March (only, he says, because he was an officer) and spent 44 months in Japanese prison camps. Dad only expressed one criticism of MacArthur: MacArthur would not listen to views or acknowledge information that contradicted his own views or opinions. That is why the original conflict in the Phillipines was such a mess, and MacArthur's reputation is forever diminished in my mind by the hardship he caused American soldiers.

On the other hand, MacArthur was part of a system, and once the necessities of the system overcame the individual idosyncracies of the persons responsible for operating the system, he contributed something valuable to the final outcome.

The same is true of Steve Jobs: A business is a system. It requires certain talents and abilities in order to function. Sales without a good product will not survive, but an outstanding product without Sales will not survive either. In this case, the system provided both parties with what they wanted. They got to do what they wanted, they were rewarded for it, and (presumably) they both got satifaction and felt good about themselves from doing it. But without giving the system what it needed to function, neither would have been successful.

Poor old Woz, though. How long now has he been trundling out the same old anecdotes and "When I was at Apple..." stories? He really needs to get himself involved in something REALLY serious and demanding.

Of course, he has an autobiography to promote but the sad fact is that the story of his life has been circulating for years now via oral tradition. Here is a sneak preview!

Chapter One - Me and my friend SteveChapter Two - My friend Steve sucksChapter Three - My friend Steve is coolChapter Four - Did you hear about the really cool disk drive controller I invented?Chapter Five - More on that drive controller...Chapter Six - Chapter Five in diagram formChapter Seven - THE WOZ and THE FUTURE - my plans for disk drive controllers and free computers for childrenChapter Eight - Resume and references. Available for work on anything! Please! Just give me a chance!

The switch to power pc from the old motorola happened during that time, that's pretty major (they would have died w/o it). At that time slapping in a new proc and porting your os wasn't so trivial.. oh and the processor didn't exist yet, it was being co-developed with ibm. If I crack open a book I can find a nice list of things that were produced in that time.

There was plenty of developement that didn't see the light of day during that era

the one who was not under the delusion that he could run a corporation

Um, we're being ironic here, right?

Woz and Jobs are definitely yin and yang, but they do have one thing in common: they know what's important to them. And that gives them a kind of power that verges on the spiritual. They don't, like most of us, blunder through the life taking the path of least resistance and rationizing their decisions after the fact. They have "purpose driven lives".

As to who is happiest of the two Steves, I'd have to say that while Jobs probably feels the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat more intensely, I'd much rather be Woz, because he seems to be the kind of person who can find find satisfaction in each day's work. The thing that makes Jobs a bit creepy is that if you ever had his attention, you'd always wonder if it was because he had a use for you in some agenda. Woz is the kind of guy who just wants to do what he's good at, like a Shaker furniture maker. Because his motivations are simpler, you'd naturally feel more comfortable with him.

They don't, like most of us, blunder through the life taking the path of least resistance and rationizing their decisions after the fact.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but honestly, what is this: "I wanted to work on a computer at my company and they turned me down. When you think about it, every time they turned me down, it was fortunate for the world and it was fortunate for myself," if not rationalizing after the fact?

... the one who was not under the delusion that he could run a corporation
Um, we're being ironic here, right?

Originally at Apple he was delisional. Later at Next he was a royal f' up, or so they teach in business school with respect to failing to listen to customers. At Pixar he was in an industry where salesmanship and showmanship matter a whole hell of a lot. After decades of on-the-job training he finally got up to speed for Apple part 2, at least he learned to listen to customers, well more accura

LANAP but if you ask me, Jobs is a perfect case study for clinical narcissism.

It's not a totally uncommon condition in people that achieve great things after striving for many more years than a more rational person might, but not everyone thus afflicted has the necessary talent to accompany them in that struggle.

Clearly, people seem to attribute most of Jobs success to Jobs well publisized/marketed degree of talent for design and foresight. These are the two skills that seem to have the most cacher when

It's unfair for people to slag off Jobs. Sure Woz is the more personally appealing of the two, and sure, he appeals more to the average/. reader, since he's the engineer type, but Jobs has done far more for the company, and is in many ways the more remarkable person.Jobs is extremely good at getting the right people to do the right thing, and getting them to do it as best as they can. Like many bosses he's by all accounts somewhat of an asshole, but I guess most people in his position are a bit like that.

One thing that really impressed me about Woz was that he answered an email I sent, unsolicited, and sent more than a cursory form mail response. He had jjust appeared on The Screen Savers a couple years ago and I thought, "waht the hell, I'll drop him an email and see what happens..." I just simply thanked him for his work and told of a couple ways that it had positively impacted my life and that I was appreciative. He responded with a very long email and related a couple anecdotes and was very open and wi

I'm not much of a Microsoft fan, and I wonder: does Bill Gates have the same status amongst MS fans as Steve Jobs has amongst Apple fans? Steve may be a massive bullshit machine, but no one can deny he has a near god-like status amongst Apple fans.

Without Jobs there would be no Apple, Woz would have stuck at HP and written printer drivers.

Even writing printer drivers can lead to great things. After all, it was a printer problem that spurred Richard Stallman [stallman.org] towards development of GNU, which of course became the foundation for the later flourishing of Free Software and the open source development model. (Sam William's biography Free as in Freedom [amazon.com] published by O'Reilly gives the whole story of the printer problem.) You don't need to hook up with a charismatic individual with a reality distortion field to change the world. If a controversial eccentric like Stallman can do great things from a hermit-like AI lab, then Woz would have had opportunities even without Jobs.

I don't think that's true really, they just had different visions. Bills vision from a while back has been "a computer on every desk and in every home" and that has certainly happened, and almost all of those computers are running Windows.

Jobs and Gates are different kinds of geniuses, but I agree that they are probably both much more rare than the Wozniak kind of genius. There are a lot of techies so skilled at something it feels like they can contr

He created the specs for the Apple ][ case, without that the Apple ][ would have been as useful and popular as the IMSAI or other machines from the same time-period.

The Apple 1 was a kit. Moving to a non-kit was a fairly conventional next step. The case was a fairly paltry design compared to what went inside, ill-positioned keyboard, poorly implemented removable lid (easily worn if open too much),... Sorry, I used Apple II, II+, and//e models for many years, there was nothing special about the case in

It'll be nice to get an autobiography from Woz, but the problem with many autobiographies is that they show you just one side of a person, and in the tech industry that can be dull. I think that gossipy histories like Apple Confidental 2.0 [amazon.com] are superior, as they present a whole range of viewpoints and better show a person in context with other historical actors.

Still, I'm curious if Woz will write anything about the challenges he faced at early Apple from rude coworkers. He wasn't exactly treated fairly by Jobs and the company in its fledgling days, and a personal perspective would be interesting.

He wasn't exactly treated fairly by Jobs and the company in its fledgling days

That is the long standing rumour. As you say, it'll be interesting to see if this is actually the case. Hopefully he'll discuss whether his treatment (good or bad) was warranted in the context of trying to set up a big corporation. It is always advisable to treat people decently, but there are times when circumstance dictate ruthlessness.

We can probably be sure Woz will be unfairly treated by Steve after releasing this book. Woz will give out some unfavorable info on Jobs like the color of his underwear. Steve will regard this as a "trade secret" and sue the pants of Woz.

Last week's This Week in Tech podcast had about 5 or 6 people from the early Apple days doing a 30th anniversary episode, and Woz was among them (actually, Leo's had Woz on 4 or 5 TWiTs now). Anyhow, Leo asked him about this very thing. Woz responded that while he and Steve did have their occasional run-ins, Jobs seemed to have a great respect for Woz and his talents and never really flew off the handle towards him.

I was in Boston once. I needed two AC adapters. I ran into this new Apple store. I went up to the counter, "I'd like two 65-watt AC adapters." I didn't say anything about who I was. And they bring them out. I say, "How much?" They say, "We are expensing it." I said, "Yeah, but how do I pay for it?" They said, "No, no, no -- we are allowed to give gifts to special people."

Try being a regular 50-year old bearded guy who likes wearing a black turtleneck and jeans. I wasn't into Apple until some hippy college kid tried to get me to listen to what he was playing on this newfangled "iPod" thing. I had to smack him down with my WinCE PDA. Anyway, it's not a list you want to be on.

I was in Boston once. I needed two AC adapters. I ran into this new Apple store. I went up to the counter, "I'd like two 65-watt AC adapters." I didn't say anything about who I was.

Obviously being the Wonderful Wizard of Woz does not protect you from getting crappy PowerBook adapters in the first place (on my third at the moment); or maybe he needed some extra ones for some bizarro project?

My first one (for my 15" TiBook) and my step-daughter's first one (for her 14" iBook) both had the same flaw (no strain relief where cords go into hard components) and both failed on the same week after about 10 months. Both of our free replacements have strain relief and both have lasted 3+ years. I since upgraded to a newer 17" AlBook and bought a used adaptor from a friend, so I have three adapters, which means I can leave one in my office, one in the TV room and one in the laptop bag.The AlBook is nea

The power adaptor connection on anything prior to the MacBook is a particularly poor design. A small amount of sheer force (such as putting the machine down plugged in on an uneven surface where the power lead is touching the ground) will cause it to be permanently deformed. At this point, the connection becomes intermittent, and it is a lot of effort to bend it back into the correct shape.

I used to do tech support for Apple (outsourced). The official policy (from Apple) was "If Woz calls, give him whatever he wants and don't ask any questions." And one day I got him on the phone, he read me a list of SNs for out-of-warranty PowerBooks he needed repaired (he does something with PBs and disabled kids--or at least did in 1995), and I sent him the appropriate number of Airborne Express boxes for them to be pulled into NY for repair. It was one of the coolest calls I handled, cooler than when Howard Stern called for his friend who couldn't speak English. Both guys, BTW, were really really nice.

"...cooler than when Howard Stern called for his friend who couldn't speak English. Both guys, BTW, were really really nice...!

Well, with Stern allegedly scoring highly for "antisocial personality disorder" on DSM-IV (ie. an old skool psychopath), it's not surprising that he can turn on the ol' superficial charm at the drop of a hat. Similarly, a lot of high-level executives score very highly on the same scale

Just don't get between either of 'em and their goals: Then, you won't be a fellow human being, just a puppet, a cipher, a disposable and infuriating obstacle...

That's actually one of the nicest things Steve does for me: He makes sure I am always invited to the VIP guest area for the product rollouts. I appreciate that more than I can ever say.

I can appreciate one who knows what's most important in life, and one of those things is not forgetting who your friends are, and sticking by them all along. Even if it's just small things, which is the job of some secretary.

I'm not rushing to Jobs's defense, but but I don't think we'd have Apple Computer today without the Yin and Yang of Jobs and Woz. They're both different and necessary talents.

So what if we wouldn't have had Apple Computer? Someone else would have bought WIMP to the masses, maybe a bit later, maybe a bit different. And if not it would centainly be interesting to see how the Emacs like interface RMS had in mind would have turned out.

I see that you have a nice list of your friends web pages [woz.org] on your site which is great, including the link to Kevin Mitnick's [freekevin.com] site which is nice because he was in jail and everything but now it redirects to Kevin's new business [mitnicksecurity.com] which I don't have any problem with either, except that Mitnick has actualy spent time in jail for doing bad things to people and their systems [wikipedia.org] and now seems to make money advising people how to steer clear of people like himself.

FYI: The Minick story is about as tainted as any current discussion of Bush.

Not defending either, mind you. I usually like Wiki too. At this point, the Mitnick story is nothing but a 2600 PR stunt from the 90's, which is sad, becuase it really was a fascinating legal case, and a wonderful precursor to the PATRIOT ACT.

The bottom line on Kevin Mitnick is this: Kevin was a criminal, Kevin was caught. Kevin was then denied several of his constitutional rights for an extended period of time. When the 'official' sentence was handed down, I believe he got fair treatment for his crimes - but his incarceration until then extended far beyond what I could consider reasonable justice.While I do not support criminal activity, I do sympathize with injustice and prosecution under unreasonable laws, and I assume Woz would agree.

Which can't exactly be the case otherwise you wouldn't have made your post.

Mitnick brings a level, knowledge and sophistication to the field of information security which is truly unparalleled, thanks to his social engineering deeds (which many in the security industry understand and may have played around with, but not to the advanced level Mitnick did.)

Whether he makes money on his knowledge as a free man or gives it to the state/chairty because he's consulting fr

What can anybody say? He's like the Mother Teresa of Geekdom. The man does not seem to have an evil bone in his body. Although woz would probably not like it, there should be some sort of Nerd/Geek cannonization....

Once in a while, though, if a computer doesn't work with a cellphone I have, I loan my cellphone to some engineers and they'll make sure the next operating system version works with it.

It'd be cool to drop some hints like "I'm not too fond of Finder..." or "Wouldn't it be great if Safari had really good ad-blocking features?!" and have them implemented in the next OS revision! It'd also be cool to have loads of money...

I will agree with that, read both the two books over a 2 week period and I came away with the thought that Nigel and Ozzie was Jobs and Woz:) Very good series, and I await the next installment (hoping there is one of course).